It should have been so good
It really should: loads of great productions promised from our producing houses large and small, some really exciting dance, popular musicals coming to Newcastle Theatre Royal, Sunderland Empire and Darlington Hippodrome, experimental theatre from ARC and small companies throughout the region, two great seasons from Opera North in Newcastle, including La traviata and Carmen… The list goes on.
balletLORENT should have been wowing the nation with their tour of The Lost Happy Endings and David Pugh’s production of Educating Rita with a NE cast and production team should have continued its triumphant progress throughout the country, but it was not to be.
I did, however, manage to see some great shows in the two months and one week of the year before I was isolated.
(I had the worst cold I’ve had for many a long year which struck on 6 March and so didn’t leave the house—I would have been a most disruptive audience member with the coughs, sneezes and loud wheezes—and was just recovering when I received the NHS letter telling me I am clinically extremely vulnerable, thus bringing my theatrical year to a juddering halt.)
There were shows in venues large and small: one large-scale and two small-scale musicals, a large-scale play, a number of smaller-scale plays and two one-man pieces, as well as one kids’ show and a couple of dance pieces. In 2019 I saw about 70, so no “Best of…” this year, I’m afraid.